The August Garden: Too Hot & Too Much

I have beets ready to be pulled out of the ground.  But it's too hot to turn on the oven to roast those beets.  I have carrots.  The chipmunks are eating some of them from the under ground up to but not including the leafy green tops.  Which they leave for me to find.

Trader Joe's not only had lovely brown rice tortillas but they had a nice loaf of brown rice bread.  Still gritty.  But I can toast it and have a slice when eating a slice of bread seems like something I just HAVE to do.  We are eating our way thru the meatballs (with no reaction).  And today I am making some taco beef for those tortillas.  G will have something on the grill or some take out from the Chinese place.   I have heads of Romaine ready in the garden and about 8 small ripe tomatoes to go with my tortilla wraps.

I am steadily working on watering the garden (pulling weeds- tying up heavy tomato branches- tying peppers to the support sticks) but first, before watering, I search for ripe and ready produce.  The hunt for cucumbers is pretty tricky.  The hunt for any squash in the garden--well, not abundant.  The tomato plants have lots of dry spotted leaves from mildew--- the damp overnight and sunshine in the morning.  I have been cutting off leaves.  Everything below the first fruit.  So the plants have bare legs up above the knees.  While I let the hose run in the tomato bed, I counted 127 tomatoes.  Some are good sized. Mostly Early Girl.  The Sweet 100 cherries are very late.  Still mostly green.

I also picked blueberries and I now have a gigantic bag of them in the porch freezer.  Enough for two batches of blueberry jam.  One of these days (a rainy one) I am going to set up the jam making sweat shop and just keep at it until I have boxes full of blueberry and strawberry rhubarb jams.  Later, if there are concord grapes--we'll make grape jelly.  And (with back up figs now in the freezer thanks to Whole Foods) there might actually be some more fig preserves in those boxes as well.  No peach preserves this year as my friend's tree has not a single peach on the tree due to the Spring frost and snowfall at flowering time. I have to admit to not eating much of these jams and jellies.  Hardly any actually.  I think I ate one jar of strawberry rhubarb this past year--period.  When I could eat toast. This morning I had rhubarb sauce (just rhubarb and a small amount of sugar cooked for 10 or 15 minutes) on my rice flour toast.

I am thinking of making the zucchini pickles with the golden yellow zucchini that is producing fruit. Who says the pickles have to be green? If the garden only produces yellow zucchini then I have to make yellow pickles. My visit to the grocery will include the purchase of onions and another hot little pepper for the pickle recipe.

I made the gritty Elimination Plan banana muffins again.  This time with the full two cups of mashed ripe banana.  Took way more bananas that I used last time (and didn't measure).  Filled all 12 cups to the top.  The flour is rice flour, the oil is coconut, the sugar is coconut brown sugar, the leavening is apple cider vinegar and baking soda.  In a week or so, when I test walnuts and pecans, I can add some to the recipe. One muffin is a very good choice when I am feeling hungry but it's not time for a meal.